28.2.12

Nokia’s competitors are weeping today , first none were able to cross the mobile photography benchmark set my Nokia N8 and today Nokia trumped them and other camera manufacturers by launching Nokia 808 Pureview with a 41 MP Carl Zeiss Sensor.

It was no easy feat, Nokia made use of Satellite imaging technology and it took 5 years in the making to make this beautiful phone.

Well this was the big news today, at least it was within the realms of the MA students.

I am incredibly sceptical about this silly camera on phone business and will start by saying; 'this is not a phone, its a camera with a phone on it!' (as mentioned on here a few weeks ago). Secondly, there isn't even a Digital SLR (let alone a compact) with this size MP, so how on earth Nokia can do this I don't know. Thirdly, if it is true about the Pixelage, then how can you store the images with only 16gb storage. Fourthly, I bet the lens is plastic an the size of an Ants eye so what a waste of time.

Technologies aside, if this is at all true, this could really turn 'phones with cameras' upside down. Personally I think its a publicity stunt and a load of old pooy pixels...

27.2.12

In the first days of this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach, prominent gallerist Charles Saatchi, a man who was instrumental in the formation of the contemporary art world, issued a screed against the scene assembled in Florida: “Being an art buyer these days is comprehensively and indisputably vulgar. It is the sport of the Eurotrashy, Hedge-fundy, Hamptonites; of trendy oligarchs and oiligarchs; and of art dealers with masturbatory levels of self-regard.” This was a veritable bomb lobbed squarely at the highest echelon of the international arugula set. The message was more than a bit unexpected—Saatchi had built a prolific career out of the establishment he now found himself at odds with. The piece, published in the Guardian, was received with equal measures dismissal and mockery.

Writing about Art Basel in a 2006 essay for the New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl called the aughts “the decade of the art fair,” noting that the Miami festival was “crazy fun.” That decade may be over, but this year marked the 10th annual iteration of the Miami Beach offshoot (presented by UBS, the Swiss tax-code artisan and sometimes investment bank). With the recent addition of Art Hong Kong to the fold, the sun is far from setting on the Art Basel machine.

Prior to boarding American Airlines 1813 on the morning of Dec. 3, I was only peripherally aware of Art Basel and the broader international art world. A series of unlikely circumstances led to my arrival in Miami, joining the wave of weekend warriors showing up three days late to the festivities. The flight was a curious mix of retirees, the egregiously hip, and civilians. I collapsed into my seat and, in an attempt to conjure the appropriate tone for the weekend, fired up Loka People by Sak Noel. As if on cue, two morbidly obese passengers joined me in row 26, abruptly ending the syncopated reverie. I left the song on repeat.

The ride to my hotel was shared with a fellow passenger on the flight, a curator at a museum on the East Coast, his cultural bona fides pre-established by a Comme des Garçons x Fred Perry weekender and a tote bag bearing the name of a major European gallery. A soft-spoken guy in his fifties, the curator confided that he was only stopping by for a day en route to South America, and that he generally was not a fan of Art Basel. Discussion turned to the New Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He commented that it was a “beautiful space” but “too narrow” for good installations, and all too often part of “that whole downtown prank-art” element. He associated this aesthetic with Art Basel. The conversation came to an abrupt end as we pulled up to my hotel. My interlocutor said something about how it looked familiar. Isn’t this a Philippe Starck building? Well, it certainly looks pretty stark, I replied. He didn’t laugh.

* * * * *

I deposited my belongings and made haste to the main event. A small problem, however—the hotel’s taxi-procurement system was choked by the volume of people headed to the convention center. A gaggle of exasperated twenty-somethings complained and chain-smoked Parliaments in front of the glass lobby. A chatty blonde from Chicago, noting my advantageous position in the line, approached me about sharing a ride. She asked if I was in a hurry too. A minivan-cab pulled up.

Somewhere between the sealing of the taxi-sharing pact and the rolling shut of the minivan’s side-doors, an interloper appeared in the seat next to mine. It was American Apparel founder Dov Charney, his entrance a punchline to a joke nobody had made. Striped pants, white polo, boat shoes, hushed urgent conversation on a Verizon Blackberry. “Not now, I’m really pressed. This is a bad time,” he spoke into the phone, which he held at a strange angle, semi-outstretched.

Blonde-from-Chicago appeared completely oblivious to the gravity of the situation. From the third row she made cheerful Midwestern conversation with the cab driver, a man who let us know that he was thoroughly perplexed by Art Basel (but it’s good for business), and bearish on the future of law enforcement in America and Miami in particular (and seatbelt laws, at the micro-level). Oblivious to the audience, he peppered his rants with off-color comments about women on the sidewalk.

I remained a passive participant in the pseudo-conversation, save for the occasional and unnecessarily raucous laugh at the off-color comments in an attempt to get a reaction out of Dov C. I did not succeed in creating a sufficiently unfavorable impression, as when the cab pulled up to the convention center, Charney simultaneously announced his real destination to the driver and, turning to us, flashed a rictus of generosity and dismissed the open wallets. “Don’t worry about it. My treat.”

* * * * *

“The art fair is the new disco,” erstwhile Studio 54 aficionado and high-society scorekeeper Anthony Haden-Guest once pronounced. This seems relatively accurate. Shortly after making my way to the main pavilion, I overheard, at the booth of a prominent New York gallery, a female patron gushing to a gallerist sporting rhinestone-studded denim:

“I looove your jeans”

“Oh thank you—they’re Cavalli. Roberto Cavalli.”

Mostly, however, Art Basel mimics disco culture in more oblique ways. Visitors queue up in front of the convention center, at times waiting over an hour to pay the cover charge ($40 for a day pass). The nucleus of the whole affair, the Miami Beach Conference Center, is an American convention center par excellence—a dated edifice whose architectural influence can be best described as neon-Brutalist. The building has seen its cultural relevance steadily decline since hosting Ali v. Liston in 1964. More recently, the American Academy of Periodontology and the Americas Food and Beverage Show had occupied the Muhammad Ali Hall of Champions, the present name of the structure’s exhibition space. An endless line of black BMW 750i sedans, emblazoned with the Art Basel logo and carrying New Jersey plates, reminded uninitiated passersby that this was no milquetoast professional association.

Art BMW.

It was hard to imagine that exactly two weeks prior, walking into the same hall would have brought me to some doubtlessly edifying lectures: “Complying with U.S. Import Food and Beverage Entry and Safety Requirements” or “Moderate Sedation for the Contemporary Periodontal Practice.” Sedation certainly would have helped with the audio-visual onslaught that awaited inside the Hall of Champions.

* * * * *

As a holder of an ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH PRESS PASS, I was allowed to use the entrance reserved for gallerists and “VIP” guests, bypassing the hundreds of ticket-holders lined up to enter through a security-type corral. That the door was comically slow may have been deliberate—an intentional manipulation designed to accentuate the cachet. Once inside, the same phenomenon reproduced itself with greater visibility. A walled-off lounge extended the aura of exclusion, although a wide entrance ensured that passersby had a good eyeful of the unattainable mirth inside. It was kind of like Johnny Depp’s climactic birthday party scene in Blow, except the waiters were not clandestine agents about to bust the revelers for violating federal good-taste statutes. For the huddled masses on The Outside, roving carts peddled $20 flutes of champagne.

Other than bypassing the huge line, the other privilege accorded by the press credential was the right to photograph the works exhibited. The door policy on cameras was surprisingly strict, and I witnessed several cases of visitors with cameras being turned away and told they needed to check their equipment at the door. Having forgotten my camera at home, I picked up some disposable 35mm Walgreens cameras and shot away, my amateurish setup drawing the unspoken ire of more than a few gallerists.

Fair point.

The curious thing about the prohibition on photography is that people are permitted to take pictures with their mobile devices. The halls of Art Basel and every peripheral fair I attended, irrespective of policy on cameras, were full of people snapping shots with iPhones, Blackberries, and the occasional that guy wielding an iPad. It doesn’t take a trip to the Guggenheim or a Jay-Z concert to affirm that this is now the default mode of cultural consumption, but one would think that such an avant-garde community, with its conceptual installations and all-caps slogan-art (“NO PATENTS ON IDEAS.” “PLENTY SHOULD BE ENOUGH.”) would be more open to the idea of photographic reproduction.

The photographic situation is part of a much larger tension between the idea of the visitor-as-consumer, bound within the rigid logic of commerce, and the traditional museum mode of visitor-as-student. One art installation, for instance, featured a lifelike statue of Prince William, with a diamond ring strategically placed on his forearm. Visitors could walk up to HRH, like an interactive Madame Toussaud’s exhibit, and interlock arms, slipping their ring finger into the fake-diamond-encrusted band, while their friends or loved ones captured the moment on Instagram. I watched as a particularly rowdy patron put her arms around Prince Harry in a full-on embrace, oblivious to the ring. A smartly dressed employee from the London gallery that put up the statue immediately intervened, reprimanding the lady for interacting with the piece in a non-officially-sanctioned manner.

A tender moment with Prince William.

This was not the only interaction of its kind. I found myself frequently returning to an Italian gallery’s installation of what appeared to be standard flooring tiles. These tiles occupied the outer edges of their space, i.e. bordered walkway thoroughfares on both axes. People were constantly stepping onto the tiles, both as they entered the gallery’s area and as they walked past or rounded the corner. A wild-haired Italian man, who appeared to be affiliated with the whole situation, irately told off the oblivious imbeciles. I asked him if perhaps the artists had intended this kind of “accidental” interaction when they laid out the space. In an exasperated tone he explained that this was purely incidental – the issue was that the tiles, to the untrained eye, looked like material to be tread on.

Don't step on my tiles, guy.

* * * * *

South Beach is perhaps not the first place that comes to mind when considering the world of high culture. The name of the event is thus a bit infuriating—Art Basel Miami Beach, sometimes truncated to Basel Miami—a perplexing string of geographic signifiers. Basel’s other recent major export is the eponymous Basel III agreement, the capital adequacy regulations designed to reign in the bank excesses behind the 2008 credit crisis. This sober tone stands in opposition to the Floridian fiscal free-for-all: Florida, along with California, led the country in subprime mortgage defaults. Miami Beach, beyond the lexicon of pastel buildings and new money, doesn’t have much else to recommend it, save for a tinny bravado. “If Miami hasn’t gotten it,” declared Vinnie in an early episode of Miami Vice, “they haven’t invented it.”

In observing the crowd at Art Basel, I returned to Saatchi’s excoriation of the event and the international scene it stands for. He wrote, “The new collectors…are reduced to jibbering gratitude by their art dealer or art adviser, who can help them appear refined, tasteful and hip, surrounded by their achingly cool masterpieces…At the world's mega-art blowouts, it's only the pictures that end up as wallflowers.” He then named the offending “conceptualized” works: “videos, and those incomprehensible post-conceptual installations and photo-text panels.” A glance at Saatchi’s artistic roster suggests some contradictions here, but who needs consistency when you can have nostalgia?

It is difficult to categorically condemn the contemporary art scene precisely because it is so balkanized—and, frankly, I did enjoy some of the work in Miami, especially at the New Art Dealers Association (NADA) fair, one of the more peripheral events. But it is easy to sympathize with the argument that the intellectual heft of the artwork has taken a backseat to the glitter impulse. Saatchi confides: “[M]y dark little secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and simply cannot tell a good artist from a weak one.”

Idiosyncratic objections to artistic buffoonery are common, and sometimes highly visible—Hilton Kramer left the New York Times, where he served as art critic, to found The New Criterion in vehement objection to a rising nihilism in contemporary art. More recently, Tracey Emin, one of the original darlings of the Saatchi gallery, provoked an ex-lover, the painter Billy Childish, by insulting his art as “stuck” in his antiquated choice of artistic medium. He responded by drafting the Stuckist manifesto, in which he declared: “Post Modernism, in its adolescent attempt to ape the clever and witty in modern art, has shown itself to be lost in a cul-de-sac of idiocy. What was once a searching and provocative process (as Dadaism) has given way to trite cleverness for commercial exploitation.”

This artwork depicts the shattered verso of a massive iPhone. The picture of (post)modern loss.

Hence the critics’ reproach: the curators of taste are the authors of their own undoing. It’s easy to be offended by a social situation in which few people seem to be serious students of the art world, but rather dilettantes and gadflies (yr. correspondent belonging, officially, to the lowest stratum of the latter category). Art Basel can be read as a Matruschka doll of inside jokes—on the inside, authorities and newcomers locked in a perpetual accusation of nihilism; on the outside, a cryptically silly facade. The aura of exclusion – the gated lounges, the endless line of black BMWs, and the backdrop of raucous invite-only parties – suggests to the casual fairgoer that the art itself is part of an elaborate set, and she is a duped extra.

This is the classic nightclub theory of self-worth, driven by the number of people fiscally excluded from being you. The same feeling returned later that night, as I snuck into the MoMA PS1 party at my hotel, which featured a negligibly younger iteration of the same set, coupled with the perfect backdrop of a Kim Kardashian look-a-like competition. One of the competition’s winners, who looked nothing like Kim, wore three narrow red banners that declared: “IT’S ALL ABOUT ME / I MEAN YOU / I MEAN ME.”

* * * * *

When Saatchi et al. – the old tastemakers – reigned supreme, their aesthetic was not “nihilistic” but subversive and avant-garde, in their eyes at least. Now that a new scene is in vogue, the old guard charges inelegance and artistic weakness. Yet the new and the old share more characteristics than they would admit. In this perverse game of musical chairs, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Bananas speak louder than words: a VW bus filled with the fruit, left to rot over the course of the fair.

Back in the Hall of Champions, I picked up a copy of the Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. The two young women at the booth explained that they were entirely unaffiliated with the journal, which is based in Vancouver, and that they work in “import/export” in New York. Go figure. The publication, also in its tenth year, featured an article by Chinese curator and essayist Zhu Qi, where he laments the Western influence in Chinese contemporary art:

“At the height of the market bubble, a lot of avant-garde artists, seemed to have become avant-garde capitalists; each one spared no expense, claiming the need to invest up to one million RMB for their own exhibitions in order for Chinese avant-garde to catch up with Western art. Avant-garde artists in the West who are ridiculed are nevertheless sought after and emulated in China. For example, many Chinese artists worship the English artist Damien Hirst, whose diamond encrusted “skull” had a price tag of one-hundred million USD. In a parallel gesture, some Chinese artists have proposed to directly use antiques as the raw material for their installation work…“

That the boilerplate pseudo-intellectualism of contemporary art has metastasized worldwide is hardly surprising. Guy Debord, in his landmark treatise Society of the Spectacle, argues that the advent of the post-industrial art museum, which makes coherent an international corpus of art, signaled the eventual demise of art as the product of a historically traceable dialogue. The impossibility of universal communication, and the subsequent splintering of artistic communities that was witnessed with the Dadaists and Surrealists, eventually gave rise to the art fairism we see today. In the art fair we see in its near-totality the contemporary art scene, a tessellation of self-referential work.

* * * * *

Just like the man barging past me in an Allen & Co. Sun Valley fleece on his way to the VIP pavilion, fur-bedecked significant other in tow, the onwards march of the moneyed but classless is an unstoppable historical force. To laugh at the foibles of this bourgeois coterie is as old as the class-system itself. It’s easy to look at the assembled group in Miami, that Las-Vegas-upon-the-Sea, and take issue with the gilded nihilism of it all. This is the voice that condemns the generally spectacular vulgarity of taste (or lack thereof) and capital (or surplus thereof) on display, a voice that announces, in a range of tongues: this scene disgusts me. It’s an entertaining exercise, and an easy way out. Getting angry about the people standing around sidesteps the fundamental issue: why so much of the art doesn’t stand for anything at all.

Not an LLC.

Like the fashion-nightlife axis with which the art scene intersects, the perspective here is highly seasonal. Much was made of the fact that this was the fair’s 10th anniversary. Perhaps by necessity, there isn’t much of a long view of history in contemporary art, or a commitment or responsibility to a particular stance on artistic production. This ideological laziness sets the stage for Saatchi’s vacant outrage. The British poet Philip Larkin, who for a time reviewed jazz for the Daily Telegraph, echoes Debord in describing "a capsule history of all arts – the generation from tribal function, the efflorescence into public and conscious entertainment, and the degeneration into private and subsidized absurdity."

In a deleted scene from Borat: The Movie, Sacha Baron-Cohen leads a Southern grocery-store clerk in a romp through the cheese portion of the dairy section. He goes down the aisle, pointing at every single product and asking, “Is this a cheese?” The increasingly confused employee answers in the affirmative dozens of times. It occurred to me, as I wandered past a huddled group of gallerists discussing “foreign currency risk,” if the same scene could have been set at Art Basel, with Borat asking, “Is this an art?” And nobody could have given him a straight answer. This global art scene, with its attendant foibles, feels like the disco culture so enamored with itself it never got around to producing something worthwhile. And like disco, Art Basel and its courtesans will be forgotten.

22.2.12

I heard a rumour last week that a gallery was going to show the late Patrick Lichfield's pretty much unknown nude work here in London. Well that rumour was true and they will soon be on show at The Little Black Gallery on the 24th April. More info here.The work comes from an era when nudes of tall leggy beauties in all kinds of scenarios were very popular and I enjoyed those times in the darkroom in the 90's printing the likes of John Swannell (of which these are reminiscent of), Bailey and the occasional Averdon nude. There were others but I wanted to show off a bit.In reference to the above nudes, well they may be a little cheesy, but I really like them. They are tasteful and clever, particularly the one in the car. There's no rudeness, or shock tactics, and certainly no retouching.Now take off that big fur coat and lay in the snow..

…I feel it all coming back; building dens, sitting under the bridge smoking,scouring the landscape for porno mags and most of all, hanging around becausethere’s nothing to do here. The park was our haven – the only place where we wouldbe left alone.

In rejecting idealised versions of childhood,we are instead reminded of endless hours spent simply occupying spaces empty of adults.In Rob Ball’s photographs within the anonymity of the park’s hinterland or theblandness of the Essex suburban architecture, we are treated to diminutive highlightsof hue. But these glints of colour, far from being generated by some sort of naturalbeauty, are rather the consequence of careless youthful disregard. Litter litters eachphotograph: the orange plastic shopping bag, the part submerged blue bicycle frame,the flash of crimson from a discarded coca cola can. Rob Ball’s Unremarkable Storiesmakes strange the everyday – the antithesis of ‘showy’, these works quietly insist onour attention and contemplation.

I mentioned Wim Wenders new book 'Places Strange And Quiet' on here before, but that was before I actually got the book. Well now I have it (I rule) so its worth mentioning the work (and the book) again. The book itself is a really beautiful object and contains short amounts of personal text about some of the images. Small, unpretentious, and almost perfectly formed, apart from the pull out pages which I really don't like as some of them are already damaged.I could be wrong, but I often get the sense from Wenders photography that there is only one image, or one shot so's to speak. I can't imaging ten frames of the same image with slight adjustments.Anyway, the thing I like most about the book is it's title. Simple and brilliant.

18.2.12

I mentioned on here last week about returning to a certain themes and subject matter. Last weeks efforts were the haunting urban golf courses of my youth. This week I bring you the stinky Broccoli Field in all its smelly fullness. I have probably shown the Broc Field 2006 image on here many times, but it has done me proud over the last six years and is now in its final edition, so it deserves a little more web time.The new Broc Field 2012 is not so much a vain attempt to recreate another best seller (for me at least), oh no. This one is a very British affair, made in grey, stormy, wet conditions, the Dark Cloth slapping in ones face together with a bit of bad language and a funny look from the locals.The only similarities here are Broccoli, and even then the crops are probably very different types. Come to think of it; Can you even grow broccoli here in the UK.?

Well I like it, indeed I like the look of most crops and the uniformity they give in the contrasting landscape..

16.2.12

Here's a few wee snippets from my ongoing Masters Project. I really want to come up with a fabulous title, but as I have not awoke in the night with some kind of an epiphany induced heading I shall just go with 'Mercurial Memories Of A Wee Bugger' for now. Wee Bugger was apparently an affectionate term my Mother used when I was a bit naughty, like the time I threw a cantaloupe melon at my sister thinking she would easily catch it with her tiny hands, but instead became unconscious.

Based around childhood memory, we start with Tales From The Crypt, The Crypt being a cave located in the museum where one would hide on school trips and try and scare passers by with howls and monstrous sounds.

Then we have my sisters Doll House, once complete with working lights and a small electric fire (or should I say a red bulb). I decided to photograph the mini house as I found it rather than tidy the furniture and vacuum the carpet. This is simply the way I wanted to depict the subject may refer to my interest in abandoned places (all be it on a tiny scale). It does not suggest a 'broken home' as some have suggested.

Finally we have the Flowery Room. The place were I spent many hours looking up at the peculiar, but reassuring, light filled rectangle of glass while listening to Miami Vice theme tunes longing to be cool.

12.2.12

Once in a while I find myself returning to subject matter that I have dealt with before. In this case it was golf courses, shot at night (or in the case above very early in the morning) with long, long exposures and a frosty chin. It's probably fair to say I was obsessed with golf courses at night for some time. Without going into too much detail (around 2006 ish), after a long period of not being able to make any photographs, the firsts ones I made were of a golf course at night. In fact it was this very golf course you see before you.When I began to shoot the Urban Sprawl, golf courses were a perfect combination of the elements I considered to be worthy of the subject. Artificial light played a big factor here combined with a man-made landscape which often bordered contrasting natural wasteland.Part of my new work (the mighty MA) includes 'places' from my past and so the approach I had was quite different to the first time I photographed it. To cut a longish story shortish, this particular section of golf course bordered a small forest. As a youngster I would camp in the forest leaving early in the morning before the golfers arrived in there baggy pants.This particular shot (2012) is in the same area as the one above it (2006). It's just made at a different time of day, with a different angle and no flood lighting, and not forgetting a very long exposure around the one hour mark.. If you look closely at the top image you will see the little flags, same as the newer version..I would like to think of these images as a After and Before. The Before is an image with a specific purpose and idea in mind (2012), the After (2006) is an image where its reasoning and comprehension comes later. Or something like that.

Kodak has announced that, as part of its "ongoing strategic review," it will stop producing digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames, but will continue to invest in its film division

Author: Olivier Laurent

09 Feb 2012 Tags: Kodak

Less than a month after announcing that it would seek bankruptcy protection in the US, Kodak has announced that it will stop the production of digital cameras and picture frames, as well as pocket-size video cameras.

"For some time, Kodak's strategy has been to improve margins in the capture device business by narrowing our participation in terms of product portfolio, geographies and retail outlets. Today's announcement is the logical extension of that process, given our analysis of the industry trends," says Pradeep Jotwani, Kodak's chief marketing officer.

However, the firm has moved to reassure film photographers. "Kodak's continuing consumer products and services will include the traditional film capture and photographic paper business, which continues to provide high-quality and innovative products and solutions to consumers, photographers, retailers, photofinishers and professional labs," it says in a statement.

The news comes as Kodak is undergoing a wide-ranging strategic review of its businesses with the "commitment to drive sustainable profitability through its most valuable business lines." But Kodak is quick to point out that the move won't mean the end for Kodak-branded digital cameras. Instead, the firm plans to license its brand to third-party manufacturer - a move that mirrors Polaroid's action in the years leading to and following its own bankruptcy.

Kodak says that it has contacted its retail partners, and is working closely with them to ensure an orderly transition. "Kodak will continue to honor all related product warranties, and provide technical support and service for its cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames."

Kodak also plans to focus its resources on retail-based photo kiosks and digital dry lab systems, consumer inkjet printers and the Kodak Gallery.

Two weeks ago, BJP's technical writer Jonathan Eastland argued that Kodak needed to refocus its business around its film division. "What make them think that digital printing will push their share price up? For Kodak to make digital printers their core business is laughable," he said. "Each time Kodak has discontinued a film, they used the excuse that it represented less than a certain percentage of their turnover, but it's still a percentage of a very large niche market. There are still millions of photographers around the world that are using film, and not hundreds as Kodak seems to suggest. Kodak's got to go back and crunch their numbers about the film market. All people want are these little yellow boxes of film, and that should be their core business, even it means reducing the company's size further."

5.2.12

With the largest amount of snowfall in one lump I have ever seen in that there London, I felt it was my duty to don the long Johns and make haste into the suburban tundra in the early hours this morning. My weapon of choice was my Panoramic Beasty, perhaps not the most appropriate camera for this mornings endeavours, but I fancied a bit of a change from the old 5/4.

One thing I do have is a mighty pair of snow boots which reside in the downstairs loo and only come out on such occasions such as today's avalanche. 'Best thing I have ever bought' I thought as I trudged past an eight foot snowman with a big carrot nose and plastic cups for eyes.

Every year I write the same thing, be it snow, fog, or dramatic weather;'What better than to explore the familiar which now looks a little different, or in some cases totally transformed'.Today was no different and everything looked new. Shame my camera took a bit of a beating, somehow getting very wet and a bit tired...

‘Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer,‘ wrote Ansel Adams (1902-1984), who went on to suggest it was also frequently ‘the supreme disappointment,’ yet the landscape continues to offer artists of every sphere with ‘endless possibilities,’ and forms one of the great reoccurring themes of photographic art, like that of the nude or the portrait.

‘Travelling Still is an ongoing series of photographs I've been working on over the last five years,’ says Rob Carter, who works with a revolving lens camera to create his images entirely in camera. As the name of this series suggests, he strives to create the feeling and emotions of movement within the singular frame, and the experience of travelling. Marked by the powerful use of of colour and abstraction, Carter stretches the ‘moment’ both literally — in that the camera shutter is held open — and visually, as the details of his subject blur’s horizontally across the picture’s surface.

In contrast to the abstract images of Carter, and reflecting the varying and diverse techniques employed by each artist in From the Road; Harry Cory Wright approaches his subject in what could be consider a more traditional form. Working with a large-format camera and exclusively in colour, he depicts the landscape that he see’s before him in intricate detail, in his series, Place in Mind, which reflects upon what he calls, ‘our perception of place, space and how we hold ourselves within it.’ Whilst Rick Giles, an artist attuned to the environment in which he lives and works, explores man’s ‘absorbing relationship with nature,’ in works that represent a form of social documentation as he questions the physical and atmospheric changes upon the landscape.

In the work of New Zealand born Ken Griffiths, who prints using the specialised Carbo print process, we experience an immense, almost overwhelming sense of depth and clarity in his images of the American west. A theme also explored by British photographer and filmmaker Jane Hilton, who has documented many aspects of American culture — from legalised prostitution to the fast food style wedding culture of Las Vegas — over the last 20 years. Here we encounter the Nevada Desert through the windshield of a classic Mustang automobile; in the framing of the barren, mountainous landscape, she presents a portrait of a society where landscape and automobile are at one, and that brings to mind the classic road trips of Walker Evans (1903-1975) and Robert Frank.

Like the work of Hilton, the photographs of German born film director and photographer Wim Wenders — many of which are created during his personal travels and whilst location-scouting for his many films — are firmly routed within the documentary genre of photography, with both presenting an ‘intimate portrayal of culture as well as setting’ in their respective work.

Reflecting upon the work of Paul Hill, one of the great masters of British photography, the American artist Lewis Baltz writes, ‘Hill’s photographs position him among those land artists, from Capability Brown and Humphrey Repton to Richard Long, whose special relationship with the land lie at the heart of their aesthetic,’ an aesthetic that is represented in From the Road, by Hill’s seminal work White Peak, Dark Peak, which explores his intimate and very persona relationship with the Peak District. Like Hill, Josef Hoflehner also works in black-and-white, capturing the breathtaking beauty and stillness of Iceland. In Red Morning, 2005, the viewer experiences the captivating contrast between between land and ice, in a graphic image that reveals the ying and yang of the natural world.

Exploring man’s relationship to the sky, Peter Newman works with photography, sculpture, painting and video, to explore his chosen theme. ‘Gravity dictates the earth contains a buried past of dinosaurs and archeology, the surface reveals the activity of present daily life, but what is above is an empty field of possibility, a space in which to conceive and live the future,’ he says. Working with a vintage ultra wide-angle lens, that captures a 180-degree field of view, adapted to fit a state-of-the-art digital camera; Newman records the view looking upwards, from different cities around the world in his on-going series of photographs entitled Metropoly, the resulting circular prints celebrating the variety of architecture, and the character of each city.

‘At a very young age I discovered cameras; magical instruments that could capture, like a child with a butterfly net, the beauty of it all,’ writes Sam Pelly, who works with large-format Polaroid negatives in his sensitive series Into the Quiet, that is marked by a ‘haunting’ almost ‘painterly’ quality. And in a new body of work, David Yarrow, who is known for his photographs made in often distant locations, explores football pitches in remote and isolated environments.

With their varying experiences and encounters the artists in From the Road, present a very personal and evocative reflection of the landscape which they document, revealing emotions of wonderment, adventure, solitude, and above all beauty.

As some will know, in between trying to fit an MA in my pocket and other photee related projects, I still find myself with a nice bunch of degree students at Canterbury University. Thursday was a brisk walk along the Margate Coast in what seemed like minus 20 degrees and so cold even my brain felt a bit chilly, even with a woolly hat on. Margate itself is undergoing a transformation of new shops and of course the Turner Contemporary, which is simply superb and promises, Art, Photography and a fantastic Cafe where the Margate Hash is a small revelation. The quality of light in this quaint seaside town, as Turner knew, its like nowhere else in the UK and makes for fabulous seascapes, perhaps with a Doyle Blue sky in there somewhere.